T’was a cloudy and rainy evening;
how I had always pictured England. We
had just finished our Tube ride and were finally back at ground level. Waiting for us just outside of the Tube
station were two British men who would take us on one of my favorite events in
England. We split up based on the number
we were assigned at the beginning of our trip, after we were first reunited
with our teachers in the Delta terminal. The first half of us went with one man, and
the other half with the other. My tour
guide was in his mid to late twenties, and dressed very casually: a simple pair
of darker stained jeans, a jacket—most likely due to the inclement weather
conditions—a newsboy cap, what looked to be a heavy brown leather messenger knapsack,
and a pair of darker colored sneakers—similar to low cut Converse All Stars. He was the perfect example of how I was
expecting to see the British population dressed (turns out that they dress just
like Americans, slightly nicer though).
Between the attire of my tour guide
and the rather gloomy weather, the perfect feeling for this tour was set—it was
the best tour on this trip in my point of view—it was the Jack the Ripper
tour. What made this tour so cool was
not just the insanely interesting history lessons or the amazing story telling
skills of our guide—and believe me he was AMAZING. By far the coolest part of the Jack the
Ripper tour was getting to walk through the old area of London. What made the walk even cooler was getting to
physically stand next to part of the London wall that dates back hundreds of
years to the Romans, when the city of London was still Londinium. It is such a shame that most of the wall was
destroyed during the Blitz. When we were
next to the wall, our tour guide told us quite the interesting story. When the citizens inside of the London wall
had dogs and cats that were dead or unwanted, they threw the poor animals over
the wall, and into the waiting arms of the destitute to quickly be killed, if
they weren’t dead already, and be eaten.
I guess when you have to feed yourself or your family you do what you
have to do to survive.
The next stop was a tunnel dating back
to the time of the Jack the Ripper killings where our tour guide began telling
us about the first few killings and believe me I had no idea how brutal they
were. This cold blooded killer had no
respect for the prostitutes that he killed.
In a few cases he cut the woman’s whole torso open and took her organs
out and placed them around the body.
During the middle of the tour we stopped at a church where the
prostitutes would march around all day, because for whatever reason it was
legal for a client to pick up a prostitute if they were both moving, which is
just about the most pointless law I have ever heard of so far in my lifetime. Getting back to the moment we arrived at the
church, our tour guide thought it would be funny to choose a guy to use as a “prostitute”
to explain the law I just described so, of course with my luck, I was
chosen. That was quite the awkward
moment. I will never forget this tour,
or the tour guides brilliant story telling skills.
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